HFS Orchard Workshops for July 2022

The next HFS Volunteer Workshops at the Petty's Orchard Heritage Fruit block will take place:

the month's first Sunday, 3 July
the month's first Wednesday, 6 July
the month's third Wednesday, 20 July

You're cordially invited to help us with:

Collecting scion/budwood and other preparations for our public Grafting and Tree Sales Days in early August (more about this below)
Our on-going annual winter pruning
Doing checks on trees throughout the heritage block, including young plum, apricot and apple trees
In the HFS Nursery:
- Checking on status of trees and the irrigation system
- Preparing for installation of new "bath" areas there
- ... and a range of other on-going improvements
Mowing, weeding, whipper-snipping, hole-filling and removing blackberry plants
Painting labels on trees

As always, there will be ample time for a very social break over cuppas and home-baked delights. Please bring your own keep-cup to avoid generating unnecessary rubbish. We hope to see you soon!

WHAT'S GOING ON AT THE HFS BLOCK AT PETTY'S

Our annual HFS Grafting and Tree Sales Days are ON! Our biggest public-facing events each "normal" year are our public HFS Grafting Days in early August. Running these has been thwarted by COVID-19 for the last few years, so we're thrilled to be able to run two completely open events again!

Our publicity poster for these events is accessible by clicking the mini-version of it (to the right this text) or at https://www.heritagefruitssociety.org/Resources/Documents/2022HFSGraftingDaysPoster.pdf . Please feel free to send this link to friends or other groups who might be interested. The dates of this year's two HFS Grafting Days are:

Saturday 6 August from 10.00am to noon: at CERES Nursery in Brunswick, close to the entrance near the end of Roberts Street
Sunday 7 August from 9.00am to noon: at the HFS Heritage Block at Pettys Orchard

At these Grafting Days, visitors can:

obtain scion (budwood) from many of our hundreds of varieties of apples and other fruits
request on-site grafting of apple scion onto suitable rootstock we provide (please note: ungrafted rootstock will not be available for separate sale)
purchase pre-grafted young trees, ready for planting out
observe experienced (and helpful and friendly) HFS volunteers as they graft up new trees
ask questions about all aspects of the above
join a guided walking tour of the Heritage Block (at the Petty's Orchard Grafting Day only)

Scion and freshly-grafted trees will be sold at extremely reasonable prices. This is in line with our group's objective of making it easy for anyone to help in the preservation of unusual fruit varieties, as well as instilling an interest in this precious and remarkable field. The scion and tree varieties provided are primarily ones popular with attendees of prior Tastings and Grafting Days, and are ones which are typically difficult or impossible to obtain from any other source.

All this takes quite a bit of preparation! Prior to the event, HFS volunteers will be collecting, labelling and packing scion - and on the days themselves, doing facility setup and tear-down. Please help us out if you can. Volunteers to help on the Grafting and Sales Days should notify us by email here, and plan on arriving at the venue an hour in advance of the event's published start time.

Collecting scion for propagation: Our focus each "normal" July is preparing for our winter grafting season. This includes collecting scion (budwood), which we sell not only at our Grafting and Tree Sales Days, but also on-line. We also use this material to graft up new trees we can plant out or sell in the next year or two. In Victoria, most grafting of apples and pears is done in August and early September, while it's best to graft stone fruit a few weeks earlier. Fruit tree grafting is also possible in other seasons. In fact, we very highly recommend summer grafting to our members - but since we're busy then with other activities such as our apple tasting events, as a group we focus mainly on grafting in winter.

We'll be collecting only apple tree scion this winter, as the plums and apricots in the HFS collection are not yet mature enough for this purpose. If you plan to help us with this at our July workshops, or are collecting your own scion wood somewhere else, here are some helpful generic guidelines:

Firstly, ensure that your secateurs are well-maintained, cleaned and sharpened, to minimise damage to the trees.
To avoid transmission of disease between trees, secateurs must be sterilised between each tree you visit. For convenience, we recommend carrying a spray bottle containing a mix of 75% methylated spirits and 25% water.
Suitable scion must come from new-year growth - older wood is far less likely to graft successfully. It's useful to learn to identify the point on a branch where last year's growth ends and the new-year growth began: new growth is typically a more red/violet colour, and there's often a wrinkly collar-scar there too.
If the buds on the scion have begun to expand or burst, it's too late to use that wood for propagation!
Straight wood without stems is best: such scions are more compact to bundle and easier to extract individually from a bag.
Ideally scion should have about six to eight vegetative (narrow) buds, and be between 6 - 8mm in diameter and 15 - 30mm in length.
Avoid taking any wood which has fruit spurs: a new tree grafted with this material needs to focus on vegetative growth, rather than trying to produce fruit in its first year.
Avoid collecting scion from suckers that arise from a tree's rootstock, below its graft union. Such wood is probably not the variety you want to propagate!
Avoid collecting wood from excessively vigorous watershoot growth, especially that with vegetative spurs.
Prior to packing scion, cut off the terminal end of each piece, where less carbohydrates stored and the buds aren't sufficiently mature.
Bundle collected pieces of scion wood into a sealed plastic bag, preferably including some moisture or moistened paper material, and ensure it is clearly labelled with the scion's variety name.
Store scion in a cool place which has no risk of freezing. Refrigerator drawers are ideal for this.
If properly collected and stored, scion can remain viable for several months. Just remember to clear your fridge drawer of forgotten excess scion before collecting again next winter!

Free Grafting Workshops: We once again will run free hands-on grafting workshops during August. These are a fantastic opportunity to learn and practice this miraculous, fascinating and useful skill under highly experienced guidance. Details, dates and locations for these workshops will be announced soon, in a separate email similar to this one.

COVID-19 NOTICE

Most long-standing COVID-19 restrictions have now been lifted, but nonetheless:

If you are feeling unwell - even with only mild symptoms - please protect yourself and others by doing the right thing and staying at home and getting tested
All volunteers should endeavour to maintain social distancing at all times
Please feel free to wear a mask if and when you wish